Peach (35 page)

She was at the Hostellerie every morning by seven thirty when the post arrived, sifting anxiously through Lais’s letters to see if there was one from him. A week later it was there, postmarked Paris, with his name inscribed on the flap in blue ink above the words, Hotel Ritz. Peach carried it upstairs carefully, arriving with Lais’s breakfast tray.

“A letter for you,” she said, propping it on the tray in front of Lais. And unable to contain herself, “It’s from Ferdi.”

“Ferdi?” Lais’s hand shook as she took it and tore it open.

It wasn’t a very long letter, Peach noted, just one page, but it was taking Lais an awful long time to read it. At last Lais folded it and placed it on the table by the bed. “Well?” demanded Peach impatiently.

Lais smiled at her—just a half-smile, but it was encouraging.

“He was sorry he upset me but he was shocked to find me still alive. He would like me to write to him. Perhaps we can get to know each other again and then maybe one day, when we are used to the idea of each other again, we could meet …”

“Oh,” sighed Peach, “oh Lais. Will you write back?”

“I’ll see,” she replied. “I’ll think about it.”

But glancing back as she dashed off to tell Leonie and Jim, Peach saw that Lais was reading the letter again. From then on letters came regularly from Ferdi, delivered with Lais’s breakfast by Peach. She noticed that they were often postmarked Cologne or Essen and assumed that Ferdi was back working at the Merker offices. Of course Lais didn’t tell her what the letters said, though Peach was consumed
with curiosity. And Lais still avoided the Terrace Bar and the company of her old friends. Still she looked more like her old self in pretty silk trousers and soft shirts with a touch of coral lipstick brightening her pale face. And there was a different light in her eyes.

It was the week before Peach was due to leave for Florida to spend the last weeks of her summer vacation at home with her parents that the letter came from Paris. “Ferdi wants me to see him,” Lais said, holding the thick letter tightly, “he’s in Paris. Oh Peach. What should I do?”

Paris had the hot summer emptiness of a city deserted by its population for the beaches. Lais had refused the see Ferdi alone and, pushing her chair into the cool lofty halls of the Ritz where they were to meet Ferdi for tea, Peach was so nervous she felt sick. Lais looked beautiful, but different. Her hair was smoothed back and tied with a navy velvet bow and she wore a tailored white linen jacket from Chanel with navy trousers and navy suede shoes. But she smelled divinely of the same
L’Heure bleue
—the romantic very French perfume by Guerlaine whose name described that hour between sunset and dark—the blue hour—when star-crossed lovers met, made love and parted again …

Ferdi was at the table, waiting. He stood up as they arrived, taking Lais’s hand in his and kissing it. “Lais,” he said softly, “thank you for coming.”

“It’s good to see you, Ferdi.” Her voice shook a little.

They looked at each other, assessing the effects of time and change, and Peach shifted nervously from foot to foot, not wanting to break their spell. “I’ll be going,” she said finally. “I’ll come back in half an hour, Lais,” and she sped off before they could stop her.

When she looked back they were sitting opposite each
other at the round table. She couldn’t see Lais’s face, because her back was towards her, but Ferdi was smiling.

She was back in exactly half an hour, hurrying anxiously across the room to them.

“Peach,” said Ferdi, “you didn’t even give me a chance to say hello!” He really was a handsome man, thought Peach, even though he looked so much older now.

“Goodbye then, Ferdi,” said Lais offering him her hand.

Taking her hand in both his he kissed it, and then he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. “We’ll see each other again?” he asked. Peach thought he looked so eager, as if he couldn’t wait.

Lais’s face as she said goodbye was calm, with none of the radiant joy Peach had expected.

“But why, Lais, why?” asked Peach in the car on the way back to the Ile St Louis. “Why not see Ferdi now?”

“You don’t understand,” said Lais, “Ferdi and I can never go back to where we were. We are different people. We both need time to see if what we’re looking for in each other really exists.”

But at least, thought Peach, it was a beginning and if Lais and Ferdi came together again, then she would at last be free of her guilt.

Peach knew she was going to enjoy Radcliffe college—and it wasn’t just because there were all those good-looking Harvard “men” practically next door, though that helped.

Of course at first she’d felt like a “foreigner”, because her life had been so different from the other girls’, but she never spoke about the war or the Resistance in case they thought she was showing off. She bought pleated skirts and pale cashmere sweaters and loafers so that she would look exactly like they did, but somehow she still looked French.

After the first two semesters she grew bored with their “uniform” and began to find her own style. She wore skinny black sweaters and tight black ski pants with little ballet slippers, or full sweeping skirts and bright silk shirts with a fabulous belt from a smart Paris shop. Sometimes she swept her bronze hair up in a sophisticated style, thinking she looked very woman-of-the-world, and other times she let it hang loose around her shoulders in a glossy bronze cape, so that she looked fifteen instead of eighteen and very vulnerable. And when she was pressed for time, which happened a lot what with Radcliffe’s hectic schedule and
her
hectic social life, she simply dragged on a battered broad-brimmed black felt hat managing to look delightfully dishevelled and hopefully slightly mysterious. Peach carried her books in a vast shabby leather bag from Vuitton and she wore Miss Dior perfume.

Life in her house at Radcliffe was a lot like life at L’Aiglon in Switzerland but without the restrictions. The girls
were like sisters, sharing secrets and having endless, involved discussions about boyfriends, though whereas at L’Aiglon they’d discussed romance, here the talk was of sex. But of course they only
talked
about it. Nobody ever
did
it.

The little town of Cambridge was on the opposite side of the Charles River from Boston and its squares and greens and winding cobblestone or brick-paved streets were dotted with colonial church spires and bookstores and coffee houses where the girls from Radcliffe met the boys from Harvard. Peach found herself invited to football games and parties but she always went in a group with the other girls. She danced and flirted and got herself kissed in the front seat of battered sports cars but never in the back because that was dangerous territory. She’d heard stories of what happened in the back seats of cars and she wasn’t ready for that. Besides, she was saving herself for Harry.

To her chagrin she hadn’t yet contrived to meet Harry. She often went to stay with Melinda but whenever Peach was at Launceton Magna, Harry was away. He was off in Latin America researching a book, or tramping round Australia to gain authentic experience, or lecturing, dazzlingly, coast-to-coast across the USA and being lauded at literary lunches in New York and San Francisco and Washington DC.

Harry Launceton had made the news by winning three major literary prizes in two years and his name featured prominently in the gossip columns linked with a succession of beautiful and eligible girls. Peach scoured the newspapers, clipping out every mention of Harry and culling his photographs from magazines. He always looked handsome and aloof in a dinner jacket, with the lock of silky hair falling across his brow, and always with a different pretty girl on his arm. Peach severed the girls with a sharp snip of her scissors and stuck Harry’s pictures into her fat scrapbooks,
jammed with clippings. She knew Harry Launceton’s every move.

The day she read about Harry’s marriage to Augusta Herriot, Peach hurled her scrapbooks into the boiler-room fire in a storm of tears, condemning Harry’s handsome face into the flames, hating him for his treachery.

“You’re crazy,” laughed her friends who knew the story. “You’re obsessed with a man who doesn’t even know you exist! The best thing you can do is to go out with Jack Mallory—he’s been calling every night—lucky girl.”

Jack Mallory’s father was a self-made man who had ascended rapidly from local Philadelphia politics into Federal Government, treading his scruples underfoot and making a fortune in imported liquor on the way. His career had reached a pinnacle with his appointment as Washington’s Ambassador to France—though he would have preferred London and the Court of St James’s—and the young Jack had lived for several years in Paris. When Jack was thirteen his father suffered a stroke and the family had returned to the US.

Jack was handsome in a square-jawed, blue-eyed Irish style and like his father, he knew what he wanted. Peach stood high on his list. He’d been laying siege to her for weeks, contriving to be there when she came out of class, walking with her across the Yard, dropping casual references to his time in France, and bombarding her with telephone calls—none of which she had answered.

“Why?” he asked, amazed, when Peach picked up the phone this time.

“What do you mean—why?”

“I must have called every night for a month and you always sent someone with an excuse. You were studying, or washing your hair.”

“Well tonight my hair is clean,” said Peach, “and I’m
free. Are you the lucky man, or shall I accept someone else?”

“No, no, it’s me. I mean yes. Oh gosh. What I mean, Peach, is can I take you out to dinner?”

Peach suddenly realised she was starving! She had been so upset about Harry that she’d barely eaten in a week and a vision of hot comforting food overwhelmed her. She could almost smell a tangy Boston chowder and taste the freshness of Maine lobster … “Lock-Obers,” she said, knowing he could afford it, “at seven thirty.”

Jack couldn’t figure her out. At dinner she silently ate enormous quantities of food while he watched in amazement. “Would you like some more?” he asked politely as she spooned up the last of her baked Indian pudding with vanilla ice cream. Peach felt better. While Jack had struggled to make conversation she had been thinking about Harry and now she had it all straight in her mind. It didn’t matter that he had married Augusta Herriot. After all, she and Harry hadn’t really even met yet and she had her studies to finish. Radcliffe was important to her. She must learn all she could about literature so that she could discuss things with Harry on a proper intellectual level. When the time was right they were destined to meet and then she was sure everything would fall into its proper place, though she didn’t bother to map out exactly what Augusta’s place would be. Meanwhile she might as well go ahead and enjoy herself.

“That was wonderful,” she said, smiling at Jack at last, “but no more, thank you.” Encouraged by her smile Jack wondered if he dared take the hand that rested on the table. She wore a tiny gold ring on her little finger and a hoop of small brilliant diamonds on her index finger and her nails were painted a startling fuchsia.

“I think I must be getting back,” Peach said as he took her hand. “I have an early class tomorrow.”

It was snowing outside, blustering in thick little flurries that caught on their eyelashes and melted in their mouths as they skidded hand in hand along the slippery sidewalks to his white Jaguar sports car.

“Not quite up to a de Courmont,” he apologised, holding open the door.

“Probably better than a de Courmont right now,” she retorted, folding her long legs into the Jag and thinking of the de Courmont’s recent lack of success.

Peach hummed along with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony being broadcast from Boston’s Symphony Hall while Jack concentrated on the icy roads.

He parked outside her house and slid an arm along the back of her seat. “When shall I see you?” he asked.

Peach could feel his warm breath on her face, and his Irish-blue eyes looked darker in the glow of the dashboard lights. Most of the girls at Radcliffe thought Jack Mallory was handsome. At six foot two with the wide shoulders and heavy build of an ex-football player he had a virile all-American appeal. With his white sports car and his rich family, Jack was a “catch”—and he knew it.